March 2010 Stories (94)

This arrow marks the approximate spot where David Anderson was killed by an out of control car that came crashing off Paseo del Norte and landed on the multi-use trail just to the south of PdN. What you can't see here is just how close the path is to the 60 mph east bound traffic. The path is closer to PdN at this point than any other. And that… Continue

On Monday while at work, just before the lunching hour, I began to consider my lunch options. I only wanted to spend a few dollars, as I am increasingly fiscally responsible (read: I am not making as much money as I used to). I was thinking… Continue

“Who’s Paul McCartney?” my CNM student asked. At long last if war, assassinations, Nixon, patchouli, Chicago police riot, paisley, Altamont and bellbottoms hadn’t signaled The End the Internet had succeeded in signaling the demise of the Sixties by democratizing information but sacrificing small things like wisdom, critical discrimination and the historical.
As a babyboomer myself I can’t say I’m sorry. I’m a traitor to my generation. At what… Continue

The poems in The Country Between Us, by Carolyn Forche, emerged from the poet's witness of the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s while working for Amnesty International. It does for that war what Picasso's "Guernica" did for the Spanish Civil War, distilling that conflict in all its horror. In her prose poem, "The Colonel," Forche resorts to a surrealist image to convey a distorted reality: "The moon swung bare on its black cord. . ." She… Continue

Sharon Olds' 1984 volume of poems, The Dead and the Living, consists of two sections: Poems for the Dead and Poems for the Living. The first part often investigates through photographs those souls lost to history: a victim of execution in pre-revolutionary China, a starving girl in Russia, a black casualty of a Tulsa race riot.
I wanted to focus on "The Guild," one of a series of family poems. A grandfather sits before a fire, "liquor like fire… Continue

I am trying to plan my family's easter brunch plans. I am looking for a place that offers delicious fare, preferably not Mexican/New Mexican food, a place that makes reservations and is able to accommodate 10-12 people. Any suggestions? I really need to do it soon before places start to fill up. Thanks!

It is fun on occasion to look back at how you 'got to the here and now'.

One Spring I drove from my hometown in Jacksonville, Florida to Tennesse to 'take a hike'. A friend and I left the car at his family place in Pulaski (go KKK), Tn. and began a back-roads hike from there to to Sewanee (my alma mater: the University of the South)...Sewanee is on the Cumberland Plateau (2200 feet) and for a Florida Native, that was… Continue

Men never understand women. Of course that doesn't stop us from trying.

"My name is Sal Treppiedi, and I was born in Brooklyn, New York, February, 1963, to Italian immigrant parents. I have lived on both coasts, but now call New Mexico home. I am married to Debbie, a wonderful woman with a beautiful soul, and have a 13-year-old daughter, Calle, who never stops amazing me, and is a slammer herself." He is also the author of a chapbook… Continue

It's not Easter yet. Nevetherless, kids of all ages hunted for 5000 Easter Eggs at the Paradise Hills Community Center this morning. It was a lovely sunny morning and it was fun despite our habitual spring winds, which were much milder than yesterday's blasts.

Maybe some of the eggs will last until Easter, next Sunday. By then, I also hope more daffodils will be in bloom. Easter needs yellow - the color sunlight, flowers, baby chicks, Easter eggs, and happy children to hunt for them.

Through BikeABQ president Craig Degenhardt, Tristin Anderson has invited all cyclists to her father's funeral. It will be Saturday at 10 am, Sagebrush Community Church
6440 Coors Blvd. NW Albuquerque, NM
The Duke City Wheelmen Foundation will be placing a ghost bike for Mr. Anderson soon. With reference to the ghost bike and the cycling communities support for the family, Tristin said: "I would like to let them know they we appreciate their support and good thoughts more than they… Continue

I highly recommend that you see Melissa Henry's short, independent, low-budget animal films whenever you get the chance. I've seen "Horse You See" and a rough cut of a sheep movie in storyboard form. Both are lovely, and they're not films about animals so much as animal poems, self-created myths, fables, narrated in Diné bizaad (the Navajo language) with English subtitles.
"Horse You See" was shot on the Navajo reservation where Henry's family… Continue

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.

Profound words from our founding fathers and guidelines to live by that would solve a lot of issues of social injustice if just… Continue

Around the same time two of my friends asked me about the poetry of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. At the risk of more shit-stirring, here goes. In my 20s I read Ginsberg's poems in Donald Allen’s groundbreaking New American Poetry and his later collection Planet News. Donald Allen's anthology collected the Beat poets as well as those from Black Mountain College, the New York School and the San Francisco Renaissance. I preferred the work of… Continue